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As a Portland fitness instructor for 11 years and counting, Lianne Saffer has done a lot of hard workouts. There’s bodybuilding, her years spinning at BurnCycle in the Pearl, and workouts in the famed “red room” at the boutique fitness chain Barry’s Portland, where she is a founding instructor. If Saffer had to choose the most difficult workout in Portland, though, it would be yoga.
“If you make me stay still in my body and my mind? Whoa,” she says.
For folks who want to feel the burn this January, here are five of Portland’s most challenging workouts. Many gyms are offering New Year’s sales, but the hardest exercise of the bunch is free.
Rating System
1 - Challenging
2 - Begging For Mercy
3 - Update Your Will
Les Mills Grit
A 30-minute HIIT (high-intensity interval training) class
24 Hour Fitness, 4546 SE McLoughlin Blvd., 503-205-9588, 24hourfitness.com.
The Workout: Grit is so difficult, its New Zealand developers recommend it be done only twice a week, max. It consists of typical gym-rat exercises—mountain climbers, pushups, lunges, squats, etc.—but at a blistering pace with only 10 to 20 seconds of recovery at a time. Beware the two-minute “beep test”: Attendees must do a burpee every time the soundtrack beeps, increasing in speed until they’re doing continuous pushup/jump combos. Once I got the hang of it, Grit provided a boost in confidence that I rode all day long—nothing was more difficult than trying not to puke during wall-to-wall burpees.
Price: Class included in 24 Hour Fitness membership, which is $19.99 per month, if you pre-pay for the year.
Difficulty: 2
Orangetheory Fitness
An hour of heart-rate zone training on the rower, treadmill and with weights
Multiple Portland locations
The Workout: The “orange theory,” so to speak, is that the magic happens when participants work at 84 to 91% of their maximum heart rate, based on monitors that students wear on their arms during class. Attendees are awarded “splat points” for each minute they spend in the orange or red zones, which are projected on screens throughout the gym. To my great shame, I got zero splat points. The trick to racking up points, according to a regular, is to start on the treadmill. I ended there, and clearly needed to crank up the speed faster than 6.5 miles per hour.
Price: $24 for unlimited classes in January
Difficulty: 1
Barry’s “The Best Workout in the World”
A 50-minute class split evenly between running and strength training Barry’s, 1210 NW 10th Ave., 503-773-0124, barrys.com.
The Workout: Barry’s is the boutique fitness studio popular among celebrities, and Portland’s own Pearl District outpost is no exception. One Sunday morning in December, folks at the sleek lobby smoothie bar were abuzz about James Franco exercising there just two days earlier. The 50-minute class was split evenly between running and strength training, with one fast-talking instructor cuing students through sprint intervals and weightlifting. At his suggestion, I hit speeds on the treadmill I would have never dared to try on my own but was surprised to learn I was capable of—for 30 seconds at a time.
Price: The first class is free, then it’s $50 for a three-class pack. Barry’s is also running a Welcome to 2024 First Timer 3 Pack special, which is $33 for three classes and includes a free shake.
Difficulty: 2
Studio 45
A 45-minute class on a Pilates machine
1100 SE Division St., #110; 1874 NE 106th Ave., Hillsboro; studio45.com.
The Workout: Studio 45 relies on the Lagree Method, invented by fitness guru (and Portland State University alum) Sebastien Lagree and famous for its torture-rack-style Megaformer machine. The instructor led students through exercises with evocative names such as “wheelbarrow,” “mega donkey kicks” and “moonwalkers” in a sequence that combined elements of Pilates and bodybuilding. “Find your breaking point,” she encouraged as we pulsed through lunges one excruciating inch at a time. No problem; my hands were in prayer position ostensibly to keep my posture upright but really to appeal to a higher power to get through the class.
Price: $45 for a new-client three-pack
Difficulty: 2.5
The Mount Tabor 4x4
Four different routes up and down Portland’s extinct volcano repeated four times each
Start at Southeast 58th Avenue and Salmon Street
The Workout: While this 7.4-mile run with 3,100 feet of elevation gain would be a punishing outing for most humans, its creator Scott “Caveman” Martin considers it a short weekday jaunt. (Martin climbed a million feet of “vert” in 2023 and regularly runs 100-mile races.) Runners can find the map to the 4x4 on the exercise app Strava, where Martin created it a year or two ago. It’s now a buzzy training course among ultrarunners. Hot tip: Don’t leave the staircase for last, lest your legs wobble with fatigue. Also, many of the slopes are so steep, they are more like hikes than jogs. After taking an hour and 15 minutes to complete two repeats of each hill (so, a Mount Tabor 2x4), I retreated to my car to pound electrolyte water and ibuprofen.
Price: Free
Difficulty: 3